For some mid-February enjoyment

When I was in my youth with fewer responsibilities and approximately zero babies or businesses to tend to, I enjoyed going to a warm-weather place for an extended period of time in February or March. Traveling in December felt silly and expensive– far too early in the season to be so done with the cold. As a California native, I was just getting acquainted with the frustrations of winter, even finding some of it charming. But by the end of February, even I had…simply had it. 

And today, right on cue, February 19th, I have…simply had it. I just saw Doritos is launching a protein chip. I HAVE HAD IT. But I’m not going anywhere. There is no warm weather trip in my immediate future, and finally, 16 years in New York, I’m “leaning in” to the idea that maybe “wintering” can be as fun as “summering.” I am, after all, a person who truly loves to be at home, and what better time to be at home than during the coldest winter in years, with a 13-month old who’s just learned to walk (this is a joke, it is a bad time to be only in the home). 

BUT, I am learning, I am leaning, and some things are true about me loving being at home in the winter. I love making coffee in my little Mocamaster, I love working on the couch next to my cat, in soft clothes without makeup or washed hair. I love to make lunch in my kitchen (that brothy chili isn’t going to make itself) and I love turning the thermostat up after my husband has turned it down (back and forth, forever and ever). I also love cooking something for a very long time, giving me the illusion of productivity, knowing I’m doing something without having to do much at all. 

That, to me, is the joy of winter cooking. Something we really look forward to in, say, November or immediately post-holiday. But by mid-February, we’ve all but forsaken the happiness a low and slow rich braise and comfy cozy pot of br*thy b**ns brings us. Because….we’ve had it!

So I guess I’m here to say, it’s February 19th and you have a few choices. You can, of course, fly to a warm weather place (but just know, that is only temporary). Or, you can buckle down, lean in, find happiness in a thermostat set at 72°F (even if that, too, is only temporary) and decide that you’re going to find someone to sell you three pounds of osso buco so you can spend several hours of your precious life making this beautiful ragu.

Yes, I am presenting you with the opportunity to sear thick slabs of meat till they’re impossibly browned, making sure to turn on the fan above your stove so you don’t set off a smoke detector. To chop an onion finer than you usually do, meditating on the concept of “good knifework” and if you have it and what that even means. To caramelize a whole can of tomato paste without worrying about how to store the leftovers, and the rare and satisfying chance to dump a whole bottle of wine into a pot, swirling it as it exits to make that cool little vortex. And then, the greatest gift of all: The gift of walking away to do something else– literally anything else– for three hours, only to come back to a pot of marvelous braised beef, a sauce slick with fat, sticky with beef tendon and rich with bone marrow. The choice is clear.